The Finance Minister in his last full budget focused strongly
on infrastructure, health, education, agriculture and rural sector. Ice Make Refrigeration Limited (Ice Make) would
rate this as a strongly positive budget for agriculture, food processing, dairy, and cold chain
logistic and storage sector.
The Budget is prudently
focused on improving farm income through heavy investments into rural
infrastructure and social welfare areas like education, health, affordable
housing, sanitation and social security. All these measures are likely to
significantly reduce farmer distress levels and increase disposable income in
the hands of rural population, both from agriculture and non-agriculture
activities. Rural population was one of the biggest winners of this budget,
with a sharp increase in MSP, heavy investment in agricultural markets and
health protection in addition to increased focus on education and other social
welfare schemes.
Some of the key
measures announced by FM which will benefit Ice Make and our clients are as
follows:
(1)
BOOST
UP TO AGRICULTURAL AND RURAL SECTOR
►
Announcement of Minimum Selling Price (MSP) for crops @ one and half times of
their production cost.
►
Institutional Farm Credit raised to Rs. 11 Lakh Crores in FY 2018-19 as against
Rs. 8.5 Lakh Crores in FY 2014-15.
► To
develop and upgrade existing 22,000 rural Haats into Gramin Agricultural
Markets (GrAMs) for providing facility to farmers for direct sale to consumers
and bulk buyers which will cover the interests of more than 86% small and
marginal farmers.
►
“Operation Greens” launched to address price fluctuations in potato, tomato and
onion for the benefit of farmers and consumers. Rs. 500 Crores have been
allocated for this operation and it shall promote Farmer Production
Organizations (FPO’s), Agri-logistics, professional management and processing
facilities.
► An
Agri-Market Infrastructure Fund with a corpus of Rs. 2,000 Crore will be setup
for developing and upgrading agricultural marketing infrastructure in the 22,000
Grameen Agricultural Markets (GrAMs) and 585 APMCs.
►
Two New Funds of Rs. 10,000 Crore announced for Fisheries and Animal Husbandry
sectors.
►
Allocation of Ministry of Food Processing has been doubled from Rs. 715 Crore in
FY 2017-18 to Rs. 1400 crore in FY 2018-19.
► Fruit juices and vegetable juices including
cranberry juice food processing Industry Custom Duty has been increased from
30% to 50% in order to increase domestic value addition and to boost indigenous
Industry.
(2)
Medium,
Small and Micro Enterprises (MSMEs)
► A
sum of Rs. 3794 crore has been provided for giving credit support, capital and
interest subsidy and for innovations.
► A
target of Rs.3 lakh crore set for lending under MUDRA for FY 2018-19 after
having successfully exceeded the targets in all previous years.
►
Corporate tax has been reduced to 25% for our Company as total turnover or gross receipt has not exceeded
Rs. 250 Crores in the FY 2016-17.
(3)
Employment
►
Amendments have been made in the Employees Provident Fund and Miscellaneous
Provisions Act, 1952 to reduce women's employees' contribution to 8% in the
first three years of their employment against the existing rate of 12% or 10%
with no change in employers' contribution
► As the Company
is in the process of employing more Employees, the deduction u/s 80 JJAA will
be available @ 30% in addition to salary paid to the Employees. Even for the
employees employed in the previous year for less than 240 days but still
continuing, the Company shall be eligible for 80 JJAA Benefit.
Mr.
Chandrakant P. Patel, CMD, Ice Make Refrigeration Limited said “Ice Make as one of the
leading manufacturer & supplier of cooling solutions equipment is well
positioned to take advantage of the measures announced in the Union Budget 2018.
Allocation
of Ministry of Food Processing is being doubled to Rs. 14bn. ; fund allocation
of 12 mega food parks amounting to Rs. 15.6 bn.
Agri market infrastructure fund of Rs. 20bn., is expected to hugely benefit all food
processing companies in the dairy, snacks, fruits & vegetables space, where
our cold storage and refrigeration equipments are heavily required.
This
should firstly encourage farmers to spend more on agri inputs like seeds, farm
equipment, fertilizers and agrochemicals. In addition to agriculture,
government is also trying to help the rural non-farm economy in the small-scale
sector, fisheries, animal husbandry, rural infrastructure etc. Secondly, with
higher disposable incomes, there should also be a recovery in demand -- firstly
for staples followed by discretionary items. More money for rural population,
will directly or indirectly benefit agriculture, food processing, logistics and
cold chain storage companies”
Mr. Patel Added, “The
importance of developing a robust cold chain has caught the attention of the
policy makers. Our Industry too has always been upfront in investing and
innovating in solutions that lead to lesser wastage, shortening the supply
chain delivery period and value addition to the product. At the policy level,
the government has taken initiatives in setting up cold storage and
distribution centers. The Government of India is one of the driving forces in
developing the cold-chain industry and supports private participation through
various measures, subsidy schemes and grants.”
About ICE Make
Ice
Make Refrigeration Limited has been successfully satisfying the needs of its
customers, from production to after-sales service, since 1993. The
Company is engaged in the business of providing customized cooling solutions to
diverse set of clients across wide range of industries by manufacturing and
supply of high quality refrigeration products & equipments. Ice Make was
listed on SME Platform of NSE (NSE Emerge) on December 8, 2017. The Company
attracted record SME IPO subscription of over 260 Times, worth over 6000 Crore.
The Company operates under four key business verticals which include, Cold
Room, Commercial Refrigeration, Industrial Refrigeration and Transport
Refrigeration. It caters
to wide range of Industries including Diary, Ice-cream, food processing,
agriculture, pharmaceuticals, Cold Chain, Logistics, hospitals, Hospitality and
retail among others. The Company received several awards and accolades including
Indian Leadership Award for Industrial Development in 2011, Best Medium
Enterprise (Manufacturing) & Skoch Award in 2014 and India SME 100 Award in
2017. Ice Make recently received revised upgraded rating of BBB Plus (Triple B
Plus) from CARE
Ratings which indicates stable and positive business outlook of the Company.
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